In the particular scenario that the article describes, activists need to protect their information from people that probably have little respect for the Geneva convention and would possibly find any evidence of encrypted information as proof enough that there is illegal activity going on. This, in turn, might lead to the police beating the key out of them.
Now, if a solution such as Apple's FileVault or PGP's PGPDrive offered an "interleaved drive" system where one file stored multiple encrypted disks, and which one is accessed depended on which key you provided, perhaps things can be changed a bit. Password A unlocks a drive with mild dissidence information to appear credible. Password B unlocks a drive with the truly secret data. If captured, after some hours of a (probably highly unpleasant) interrogation, the dissident gives password A, interrogators try it, it works, they find nothing of tremendous use and dissident walks.
If people have written on this before, I'd appreciate a few references.
As for Zimmerman's comment about keyloggers - I'd hope the software offered a point-and-click method of entering the password. This can still be defeated with a custom-tailored piece of spyware, but it can be made much more difficult for the attackers to do so (depending on how well it's coded, it might actually require TEMPEST or the breaking of kneecaps to extract the password).
Cheers, Ivan.
R. A. Hettinga wrote:
SOFTWARE HELPS RIGHTS GROUPS PROTECT SENSITIVE INFORMATION
[snip]
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